DEADLIEST DAY FOR IDF
Hamas rockets kill 21 troops
Twenty-one Israeli soldiers were killed Monday in Gaza when two buildings rigged for demolition by the Israel Defense Forces collapsed due to a Hamas rocket strike — marking the Jewish state’s deadliest military incident since the war began.
Another three soldiers were killed fighting in the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis, leading Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to call Monday “one of the most difficult days” of the war.
The 21 fallen soldiers had been operating more than a third of a mile from the Israeli border city of Kissufim, with troops preparing to blow up two Hamas sites with planted explosives, The Times of Israel reported.
IDF spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said Tuesday that as the soldiers were completing their task, a terrorist appeared and fired a rocketpropelled grenade at a tank protecting the ground soldiers.
The blast killed at least two soldiers and wounded several others, according to IDF sources, with a follow-up explosion triggering the mines that the troops had placed around the two buildings. “The buildings collapsed due to this explosion, while most of the forces were inside and near them,” Hagari said.
He noted that while the detonation of the mines remains under investigation, it was likely caused by a second RPG fired at the troops.
The casualties were part of the IDF’s 205th and 261st brigades and ranged in age from 22 to 40, according to the Israeli military.
“The best sons of this country, who volunteered to defend the home and paid the most expensive price,” IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Col Hertzi Halevi said.
“We share in the grief of their families for the heavy loss, and they know that the pain is too much to bear.”
Halevi added that the mission the soldiers were carrying out was to ensure Hamas could no longer operate in the area and facilitate the return of the Palestinian and Israeli residents who have been displaced by the war.
It was the single deadliest incident for the IDF since the start of its ground incursion into Gaza. Israel’s military death toll since it placed boots on the ground is now at 219.
‘In the name of our heroes’
Along with the 21 soldiers killed near the border, an additional three soldiers were killed Monday during an assault on Khan Yunis, southern Gaza’s largest city.
Netanyahu, in describing Monday as “one of the most difficult days” of the war, added, “In the name of our heroes, for the sake of our lives, we will not stop fighting until absolute victory.”
To that end, the Israeli military has now surrounded Khan Yunis in southern Gaza. The city has recently seen the most intense fighting since December, as the IDF focuses on eliminating Hamas from the region and locating and rescuing the more than 130 remaining hostages.
The 98th Division is leading the Khan Yunis offensive, which began Sunday, with soldiers directing a series of airstrikes on Hamas sites and confronting gunmen on the ground.
The fighting in Khan Yunis is once again forcing countless Palestinians to flee further south or west after hundreds of thousands sought refuge in the city during the peak of the fighting in northern Gaza.
The intense bombardments and gunfire in southern Gaza will likely carry on, as a temporary truce deal just presented by Israel has apparently already fallen through.
The tentative Israeli pitch, which would have seen all the hostages in Gaza freed in phases in exchange for a two-month cease-fire, was rejected by Hamas, an Egyptian official with knowledge of the talks told The Associated Press on Tuesday.
The proposal had outright rejected two of the biggest conditions sought by Hamas: the freedom of all Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails and the IDF’s exit from Gaza.
As the fighting in Gaza continues to escalate, so too does the risk of war in the region spreading, as Yemen’s Houthi terror group, which is sympathetic to Hamas, vowed that overnight airstrikes led by the US and United Kingdom on its strongholds “will not go unanswered.”
The group claimed four of its governorates were hit by 18 airstrikes in the region, with 12 attacks targeting the capital of Sana’a.
The US and UK said in a statement that only eight sites were struck.